Sunday, September 26, 2010

Long Time, No See 3

So, almost seven months have passed since my last post. That's a long time. Thankfully I'm still happily employed, living a pretty sweet life, and overall having a good time.

World of Warcraft definitely took a back seat for about two months during that time, where I essentially didn't play at all. Some characters got deleted, for example, though none that I've mentioned on the blog, I don't think, and I've moved my focus away from Seona for awhile.

In fact, since I had a Warrior at 80, and a Paladin at 80, I thought to myself, why not just round out the set and get one of your Death Knights to 80 as well? That way, we'd have one of each of the Plate-wearing classes, and you'll really be able to say that you're a fan of the heavy-armor-wearers. So I did.

Well, almost. Purah, my Blood Elf Death Knight, is level 79.5 and getting closer and closer to 80. The Brewfest holiday helped a little, and the Argent Crusade's tournament, along with the ever-wonderful random instance tool. While questing is great and all, I've done most of the Icecrown quests twice now and am getting tired of doing them again. So Purah is getting his Blood-DPS out of his system while he still can.

I'm not 100% sure what I'll do in Cataclysm. In those many months since I last posted, more information had come out about the next expansion, including the change for Death Knights to have defined trees like all the other classes. It means that if Purah is going to stay a Blood Death Knight, he'll need to be a tank. I'm not sure how I feel about that, honestly. He's been Blood DPS since I created his first incarnation in the Wrath Beta testing, and I've never tanked on a Death Knight before.

The main reason I stopped tanking with Yrovi is because it wasn't fun. It was stressful, because I wasn't terribly good at it, and you're expected to run the group as the tank. You're expected to know the fights, and the route to take in the dungeon, and to set the pace. It's a lot of responsibility. On top of all that, I don't consider myself to be the best tank ever, which just makes me nervous.

However, that said, I think that Blizzard has made it easier than ever to allow someone to learn to tank. The anonymity of the random group generation makes it so that if I screw up on one run, it isn't the end of the world. So maybe, just maybe, I'll tank again in Cataclysm... and this time on both Yrovi and Purah. I'll miss Blood DPS, though, that's for sure. I mean, how can you not love a DPS machine that ends every single fight at over 85% health, no problem?

But after such a long hiatus, I think I'm ready to get back in the game. I'll see you in the world... of Warcraft.

Footnote: I've never really had just -great- luck in-game, but today as a total exception, I think. Not only did I get Purah to level 79 with a 5-man group that was just freaking awesome (thank you so much Bléaksoul of Kirin Tor and Jovencita of Dethecus, in particular!!), but Purah went ahead and did a quick random group-up for Coren Direbrew, the Brewfest holiday boss, and got the Brewfest Ram AND the Remote! The first time I've done the fight on this character, and he gets one of the rare, epic mounts. Couldn't believe my eyes. After learning it, I felt really obligated to get the achievement and the title as well, since it was silly for him to get the mount in the first place (unlike Yrovi and Seona, who have small collections, I've kept Purah pretty sparse in terms of extra little goodies, not even teaching him the Celestial Mount that I bought). So I managed to earn enough tokens to get the Brew of the Month club and now Brewmaster Purah can run around on his ram whenever he likes.